1. The Commoditization of Information & its Trends in the Enterprise
Hi coworkers, let's take a look today at various trends, the commoditization of IT in the enterprise as well
as some innovative platforms that can potentially impact large enterprises & also, disrupt & rearrange
their way of doing business. Some of these (although not an exhaustive list) are:
1. Boundary of proprietary & non-proprietary information in the enterprise: There are two very
interesting arguments presented today that highlight this discussion.
There is an argument ongoing between the EU & Google about people's information’s 'Right to be
forgotten' meaning that Google cannot store people's data & searches forever in its DBs & they should be
deleted after a certain period so that people’s data should not be locked forever on the Internet or in
their DBs. Google says that its business model is to sell Web Ads to local companies based on preferences
of people & so, such individual preferences & searches form the core of its data that it presents to online
advertisers. Without such preferences, all ads will become ‘general ads’ & it cannot do any Data Mining
to target ads to any audience. This is a unique argument that hasn’t been considered before the advent
of the Information age & will be interesting to follow, as to what’s the outcome of such a discussion.
The second argument is among Oracle & Google on licensing fees for the Android Mobile OS that was
built using Java that is openly distributed by Oracle. Google created the Android Mobile OS that powers
millions of devices worldwide using freely available Java. Everyone credits Google for it but Oracle also
wants a piece of the pie & is claiming Royalty or Licensing fee for each device shipped with Android
OS. This is akin to Microsoft of the 1990s charging fees for each Windows OS loaded on every PC, which
constituted its bread & butter business. The catch is that Google created Android using 'free tools' so it
says that it shouldn’t have to pay licensing but Oracle says it should because it is shipping Android
commercially to be sold in millions of devices.
The best parallel that we can draw is of an artist – let’s say an artist uses clay or some other available raw
material like stone to create a work of art & then, sell it; does he have to pay fees to the person who gave
the free materials? Google is the artist here that used its skills, knowledge, expertise & time & effort to
create a work of art that is used freely across the globe but Oracle who initially gave the free raw material
now wants his fees for that.
Eventually, these two arguments can shape the boundaries of what’s constituted as licensed or free
information & it will no doubt, be interesting.
2. Commoditization of IT platforms, products & services: With core platform & product manufacturers
like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, HP & SAP embracing open-source & community platforms to
develop products instead of closed-source technologies, the slew of IT products coming out of their
stables are appearing more & more open-source based. Oracle started using open Java/J2EE extensively
instead of closed door technologies used earlier while building its large apps like RDBMS, ERP (Financials),
Web Server & DW platforms (OWB) since 2008. Google has been the largest proponent of open-source &
uses all kinds of platforms in its applications. There were many articles in 2008-2009 when Google had
put Linux on every desktop in its enterprise after some hackers used vulnerabilities of the Windows OS. A
subtle look at Google's community projects will show that it has a lot of IT projects & open tools gifted to
the developer community like APIs, debuggers, compilers etc. Its Android Mobile OS was written in Java
for which Oracle had claimed licensing fees. Most of Google’s apps can interconnect & transfer data
across devices & operating systems easily & seamlessly.
Microsoft, the chieftain of promoting closed-door technologies & keeping users within its closed IT
applications has been forced to change with its updated Windows-10 OS having APIs that developers can
connect to, thus allowing developers to create apps for its Windows & Mobile marketplaces & connecting

2. other apps more smoothly. The biggest change that Microsoft made was to allow Windows-10 OS as a
free download for all users that licensed versions of its Windows-8 OS, the first time when it moved away
from licensed & fee-based model to ship Windows along with new PCs. This demonstrates that Microsoft
is also changing the way that it used to do work & ship its newer systems.
SAP used ABAP language to extensively write its ERM, HRM & CRM application suites but has gradually
been moving away from client-server to open-source platforms & browser-based thin client systems to
allow for faster usability & less expensive hardware needs. Apple has also opened up its Apple
marketplace APIs to developers for combining iOS apps, iTunes & other apps.
3. Adoption in the enterprise: What this implies to enterprise customers is that more & more of such
products will eventually be shipped from the big IT companies to the market & they’ll end up with a lot
more features for their investment. This also means they may have to retrain their workforces to work
with such new products & extract efficiencies of - Scale, Interoperability, Security, Rapid Application
Development & to lower TCO (total cost of ownership).
4. Internet of Things: IOT is the new buzzword wherein various devices - desktops, laptops, mobile
devices, Point of sale scanners, Barcode scanners, fitness trackers & appliances are all gearing towards
being interconnected via various tools into a homogeneous environment where information passes
seamlessly from one tool to another. This will open a host of possibilities in expanding the frontiers for
enterprises on how Information is being created & consumed, how individuals & companies use &
distribute information. However, such platforms are still at a nascent stage & would take some time to
mature & become commercially available.
5. Enterprise-based collaborative tools & networking: After large enterprises realized the momentum of
individual networks, a lot of platforms to extend such functionality in the enterprise became more & more
commonplace. These are geared towards collaboration & resource outreach within the boundaries of an
enterprise. Organizations today want to engage their workforces in create new ideas, share these ideas &
create new tangible or intangible value via such collaborative tools. They want to tap into the creative
energy that hundreds or thousands of such individual resources can create with such tools.
Disclaimer: This article has not been plagiarized from any internet site & is written expressly with the
purpose of informing or sharing views & opinions only.